


Five Views of Ryhope Wood

by Northland



Category: Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only the leaves moved, in a sinuous pattern hinting at something there that wanted to remain unseen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Views of Ryhope Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syksy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syksy/gifts).



1.  
Ryhope Manor  
Shadoxhurst  
May 1879

...Anna is becoming quite ungovernable. Last Friday she was two hours late for tea, and came home with torn skirts, scratched and filthy enough to have been gone for days. She says only that she was with the “wild girl” in the wood -- some tinker’s child, no doubt, even painted if one can believe Anna’s tales!

Ryhope is no use. He merely laughs and says that at her age he was playing with King Arthur. If I have my way she shall go to Barton next term; at least there are no woods near the school...

 

2.  
The small carpark was empty, its tarmac heaved into swells and waves by roots pushing up from underneath. Sarah bumped her Fiesta into a corner and killed the engine. The silence was immediate and total. It was a still day, with not even the murmur of leaves in the wind as background.

A leaning sign proclaimed that “Ryhope Wood” was managed by the Forestry Commission, but its green paint was peeling and it didn’t look like anything had been managed in some time. The footpath leading into the trees was narrow and overgrown, the gravel that had been laid to mark it nearly reabsorbed into the forest floor of dead leaves and moss. Sarah frowned. So far Ryhope Wood didn’t look like a good choice for introducing her Girl Guide troop to geocaching. Kids spent so little time outdoors these days; even in a little village like Shadoxhurst none of them seemed to take advantage of what should have been a refuge on a hot summer day.

She got out of the car and looked around for a map of the pathways, a signpost, anything. When she slammed the door, a bird blasted up through the canopy of leaves in a screeching flash of black wings. Sarah flinched, and then felt idiotic for having been startled.

A rickety noticeboard at the far side of the car park must have more information about the place. But as she walked closer, she could see that the only thing stapled to the wood was a rippled and yellow sheet of paper: ‘Ryhope WOod CLOSED until furthr notice.' Sarah wondered why that seemed so unnerving. Bureaucratic typos were hardly unusual, but something about that felt desperate, as though whoever had worked here couldn't take the time to print out something clearer before leaving.

Someone had scratched an eye into the noticeboard, too. It was crude, just two angles surrounding a circle, but it was effective - Sarah definitely felt watched. She couldn’t keep from looking over her shoulder again at the wood. Something rustled in the underbrush, and she braced herself in preparation for another bird. But nothing flew up. Only the leaves moved, in a sinuous pattern hinting at something there that wanted to remain unseen.

Sarah swallowed and made for her car, walking slowly and keeping her eyes carefully unfocused. The back of her neck tingled and the chill of instinctive fear rippled over her skin despite the heat. She'd find another wood for the Guides' nature walk, even if it was farther away. Whatever - whoever - was here in Ryhope Wood was nothing she wanted to meet.

 

3.  
"She's bloody mental," Kathleen complains. "It's humiliating, the stuff she spouts."

Rachel wraps arms around her knees, leaning against the polka-dotted pillows on her bed, and shrugs. "Your mum can't possibly be as crazy as mine."

"Oh yeah?" Kathleen can't believe she's about to tell someone else this - even her best friend. But she's finally grown up enough to realize that the things her parents have been saying and doing all her life are, well, insane. "Does she talk about the forest like it's alive?"

"Sometimes." Rachel shrugs again. "Her uncle got lost in there and died years ago, when she was just a little kid. Mum always makes it sound like Ryhope is some kind of Hammer horror movie. And Dad thrashed Marcus the one time they caught him going in there."

"Your brother's been in there?"

Rachel snorts. "He and his idiot friends had some bet going about who could sneak into that abandoned house first. I don't think any of them actually made it there before all the parents found out and put a stop to that."

What is it about Ryhope Wood that turns boring adults into frothing nutters? Kathleen still doesn't get it. When she was little, of course she'd checked it out in spite of her mother's increasingly alarmed warnings: Don't take the path, Kathleen. Don't swim in the pond, it's not safe. Don't don't don't... But it was just a thin belt of trees, and when she'd gone in, all she'd got was bored and thirsty before the path turned her around and spat her out by the old stone in Chisby's field.

Kathleen looks down at her fingers, with the nails bitten ragged no matter how many times she tries to grow them out. "Now she wants me to make some kind of voodoo doll."

"What the hell?" Rachel sits up straight, finally impressed by Kathleen's story.

"I caught her carving this weird little thing out of a piece of wood, and then she said I was old enough now that I should be responsible for some of the wards." Kathleen wants to tell Rachel the whole story, but it's too embarrassing to mention what her mum actually said was that Kathleen could do it now because she'd finally got her period.

"Is she trying to be a witch?"

"I don't know about trying," Kathleen jokes weakly, and Rachel kindly lets it drop. They move on to other topics like whether they're going to get any GCSEs, and if Grimley will ever have a decent multiplex.

Kathleen never mentions the poppet again.

 

4.  
[Undated excerpt from Steven Huxley's diary]

I wonder how much influence our unconscious preconceptions - stereotypes, if you will - have on the mythago forms we create. My father's Guiwenneth was very different from my brother's; although her story must have been much the same in essentials, she was softer, less skilled in war.

The question came to mind again today because I met a mythago named Arak, the creator of cave art - the person that the artists of Lascaux remembered or built into myth as they painted. I recall a long-ago entry in my father's journal about Arak, and much of this mythogenesis was the same in appearance: hands with red ochre ingrained into the skin of the knuckles, hair braided back with strips of horsehide. One thing was very different, though: Arak was a woman. That was not the way my father had described her.

Her features were strong and she looked older than I, with greying hair and eyes lined with crowsfeet; the lines of her body weren't obvious under the bulky leather tunic and leggings she wore. It was certainly possible my father had overlooked these signs. Or was the Arak he met male because in his mind any great cultural hero must be a man?

I think she was searching for a new cave suited to her art, although I didn't understand the language she spoke, so I can't be sure. We communicated mostly by simple hand signs and, not surprisingly, pictures. When I gave her a blank sheet from this journal and a pencil, she sketched an imposing bear and indicated that it was using one of the caves along the riverbank that I had passed by yesterday. I felt fortunate to have missed it.

Before she left in the morning, I gave her the pencil. She seemed pleased by the gift.

 

5.  
Not in this time, not in the animals' time, but in some time, there was a woman who knew the languages of stones and of trees. Her people were crafty and could open hollowings wherever they wished. But they did not always do so wisely.

They stole the head of a great chief and took it back to their own stronghold. His ghost pursued them and used their own magic against them.

Four times he called up the spirits of the land against them. First he called the ghosts of the trees, who crushed some of them, but did not prevail. Then he called the wind, which carried some of them away, but did not prevail. Then he called the storm on the water, which drowned some of them, but did not prevail.

Last he called the beasts: the cold-eyed wolf and the heavy-jawed bear and the wild pig with tusks so sharp that it could open a man from stones to neck. The beast spirits killed all of the crafty folk who remained, and trampled down the walls of their fortress.

The woman alone survived, and fled. But the chief's ghost still followed her, for he had sworn none of her people would live to boast of his defeat. She raised an army of her own ghosts against him, and they prevailed. She took the chief's head and cast it into the lake where the mud would draw it down and the roots of the reeds hold it deep under the water.

And that is why we live here by this water. For in some time - maybe this time, maybe another time - the chief will return to find his head. And when he does, we will defeat him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my speedy UK betas Firerose and snowballjane, who saved me from several egregious errors. (Any remaining, etc.)


End file.
